Cherry A VCA parody
by kana111681
Summary: Cherry is going home. But will she be able to escape those dark clouds following her? Probably not...
1. Chapter 1

Whenever I read stories about girls my age, I wonder what happened to my childhood. The doctors tell me that this memory loss problem is temporary and it will go away, but they don't know that I see them twirling their fingers around their heads when they think my back is turned.

He's out of our lives, but he's not gone. The doctors tell me that he is a figment of my imagination, but I know they are lying. All I have to do is close my eyes and he's there, smiling so widely that I can see all three of the teeth that he has left, telling me how pretty I am, touching my arm and putting neat little braids in my hair and stickers of flowers and butterflies on my nails.

I shudder just the way I would if ice jumped down my back. Then I shake my head to rattle the images and stop the flow of pain. I bang my head against the wall often when I do this, and the doctors put me in a straight-jacket because they say that this is not helping my amnesia.

But today the therapy sessions have ended and I am finally going home. I am riding the big yellow bus instead of the small one and there are regular people everywhere. I hope I don't get lost and I hope those dark clouds will stop following me. But I will keep going because I am the eternal cock-eyed optimist who always sees a rainbow after every sorrowful storm. The past can no longer hurt me! I won't let it!

"Why is this happening to me? Why am I so cursed?" I cry aloud, unable to help myself. People roll their eyes around me.

But it doesn't matter because I, Cherry Tatterganger, am going home!


	2. Chapter 2: Lonely fruits

When our therapy sessions ended, I didn't think that the other girls wanted to be friends and keep in touch. We had revealed so many secrets to each other and we had even shaved each other's legs. Sometimes sharing things is too binding and each revelation is like a string wrapping itself around your heart. (I think that's where those scars on my neck came from.)

No one but my father ever kept a promise to me, and my father's promises caused me to lock my door at night. I didn't expect that the others would keep theirs.

They had their own problems.

Misty Foster's mother and father had a bad divorce and her father had gotten involved in a romance with a much younger woman. Misty's mother was trying to see other men, but she became hopelessly bogged down in the quest for youth and beauty that hasn't come home in weeks. One miserable day, she was put in jail for harassing the lady at Dillard's. She had just snapped because she didn't have thirty dollars with her to buy that lipstick that she really liked.

Star Fisher lived with her grandmother Pearl Anthony, her mother's mother and her brother Rodney after her father had deserted the family and her mother ran off with a boyfriend. I was afraid of her when we first met. She seemed so hard and mean, even, but after I heard her story, I understood. She finally confessed that she was angry at some man called "Ghostwriter" for putting her in the ghetto. She claims he did this because she is black.

And then, there is the unofficial president of our club, Jade Lester, a beautiful and rich girl from Beverly Hills. Her parents treated her like another possession. She was tired of being mailed back and forth between in a packing crate as their lawyers screamed at each other from opposite sides of the courtroom. Once, the post office got the address wrong and mailed her to Abu Dhabi. Jade ended up breaking three of her nails and she said it made her skin break out. She is now in the middle of a messy legal process involving suing her parents who are still in the process of suing each other.

As bad as my story was, I ended up feeling sorry for each of them.

My half sister, Geraldine always warned me about getting too close to the truth. "It's like too much of good thing," she said. She claimed it didn't set you free. Then her hands were spasming in an odd way and she hastened to use the upstairs bathroom. She refused to use the downstairs bathroom because it was disgusting because the walls in our house were so thin that you could hear someone's stomach gurgle. Even though she was upstairs, I could still hear snorting noises.

Once I asked her about that white powder that I found on the bathroom counter and she said it was sugar. When I pursued this line of questioning, she responded by asking me. "What if you were horribly ugly? And you lived in a world without mirrors? Would you be better off if someone showed you your face?" Her eyes got small and dark as she said this. Before I had posed this question, I had scooped up a handful of white powder and eaten it. Her answer suddenly seemed too profound for me to do anything but stare at her in wonder because she was probably the wisest person in the entire world.

Our house was full of secrets and dark revelations that hovered in dark corners and lurked under rugs. They were very inconvenient and I often tripped over them. They made cricket and frog noises and never let me get enough sleep at night. I told them to go away, but they were bad listeners.

When Jade called me to invite me to our first official meeting my heart leapt. Geraldine gave me a disapproving look. She was busy inspecting every vein of the lettuce for the salad that she was making and she needed absolute silence in order to do this.

The moment I replaced the receiver, she demanded to know who had called me. I think she was surprised that the phone rang, since it never did. We had been using it as a paperweight for the past five years.

"It's Jade!" I said happily. "Can I go to a luncheon with her?"

"Jade is one of them," Geraldine responded. She disapproved of me hanging out with Jade because one day when she had come to pick me up she had found us making monkey noises in a tree and throwing acorns at each other, clothed only in strait-jackets. Doctor Marlowe said it was good therapy. I don' t know how therapeutical it was, but it was sure fun.

Why did she have to talk about them like they were alien creatures? Misty couldn't help it that she was cross eyed sometimes. What a snob.

She was never proud of me. When I was wearing C-cups at age nine, she made me wear a bra and loose clothing. She said that might stop that teenage boy that worked behind the counter at Happy Burger from grabbing my chest and it didn't! She made me feel ashamed of what I'd looked like in that sequined red bikini and she'd told me that I could never be a showgirl.

"You make it sound terrible," I whined. She grimaced again, but with even more disgust this time. She must have had cottonmouth, because she had to reach up and manually pull her lips back from her teeth to make her mouth go back to normal

"This therapy is a bunch of hocus pocus," she cried and her face turned bright red. She fell on the floor and began gasping for breath. As she did so, she turned her face away from mine and put up her hand. I just stood there because I knew she didn't want my help. Finally, grabbing various pieces of furniture, she hoisted herself to her feet and some of the purple color began to fade from her skin. 'What did people do before all of this counseling and analysis. They gritted their teeth and bore it." She shouted and almost fell over again. "People have no shame anymore!"

"Doctor Marlowe helped us," I sniveled because she was hurting my feelings again. Doctor Marlowe had put band-aids on my scrapes when I fell down outside and she tucked me in when we had naptime and read me my favorite book, "Goodnight Moon."

"I forbid it!" Geraldine cried and fell over again. I turned my head and left the room to go cry an ocean of tears somewhere.


	3. Time for some reader mail!

Anyone familiar with those letters from other VC characters that graced the back of the De Beers series will understand why this is a registered VCA trademark.

Now we take a break from our regularly scheduled program for some reader mail from some of our old friends. Please buy their books.

Dear Cherry,

I was very touched by your story, your bravery and optimistic outlook on life. I almost wept at that part about the red sequined bikini. I always thought that Dawn should have been a showgirl...

Love like Dawn's and mine only comes around once in a lifetime. But the foul winds of fate that rose from the secrets of the morning blew us apart. Dawn was a cold hearted bitch, a true twilight's child and she left me just because she found out that she was my sister. So unfortunately, I became very depressed and went crazy.

This was not my fault. It is all Dawn's. When she died in that fire it was my darkest hour.

Well now, I'm going to go take a bath with my children and help them pick out matching outfits. They both turned eighteen this year, but I'm sure you understand that you just never outgrow some things.

I have included a picture of myself winking. I look great in a Speedo, don't I? As you can see, it was rather cold that day.

But I must go. Something just popped up.

So you should buy the book "Dawn". Once you read about me, I'm sure you'll fall in love with me just like Dawn did before she knew we were related.

Think of how much we can "learn" from each other.

Sincerely,  
Philip Cutler

(You may call me Uncle Philip if you wish)

Dear Cherry,

Why haven't you brought my book yet? Day after day I sit in this wheelchair and try to be a cock-eyed optimist and see a rainbow after every sorrowful storm.

I'm tired of people claiming that my story isn't original! My book is not just a rehash of my mother's story, I promise. I whine much more than my mother ever did, and I'm in a wheelchair, so there!

It hurts my feelings when people claim that my story isn't original and my book sucked. So maybe my eyes are only glass which show the spinning wheels of revenge on those white worms of brains.

So buy my book!

Sincerely,

Annie


	4. Rotten eggs

After that unpleasant confrontation with Geraldine, I had no choice but to sneak out to Jade's luncheon the next day. I turned down the narrow sidewalk and ran to the end of the street, but I was getting tired and sweaty, so I had to stop and catch my breath. I'm kind of out of shape sometimes.

I waited nervously for the black limousine to pull up. People drove by and gave me disapproving looks because I was standing in Wild Fanny's spot. (Geraldine claimed that Wild Fanny was a nightwalker and I shouldn't talk to her.) I didn't know what a nightwalker was, but I figured that since it was still daytime, I should be okay.

The limousine finally came, with Misty hanging out the back window, panting into the wind like a dog. "Get your fat ass in here, Cherry!" She called, and barked. I laughed and climbed in the limousine beside my new friend.

"Onward Ho!" Misty yelled, sticking her head back out the window. Some bugs flew into her mouth. I saw the back of her shirt read. "For a good time, call 555-4545." She was a petite girl, but she complained that her figure was too boyish. She was always moaning about what a pain it was to wax the hair off her chest and how much she hated getting five o'clock shadow, at noon.

"We're going to pick up Star next. Can you believe that we're finally together?" Misty asked excitedly.

I smiled and watched the scenery go by. Slowly the houses began to look more and more decrepit. We drove past a log cabin and then there was a succession of tin huts decorated with colorful graffitti. Thriving marijuana plants had been planted outside. Some starving children in loincloths ran by, barefoot. A lady walking down the sidewalk was gunned down by an old lady leaning out the chimney of her tin hut. A starving dog stepped out of the shadows and sniffed her remains. Some naked children began going through her pockets.

Misty and I exchanged glances. Now we understood. "It's not so bad," I said, trying to see a rainbow after any sorrowful storm.

Then the tin huts were gone as well and cardboard boxes had taken their place.

We passed by a crack-whore pleading with a little kid. "Please! I don't have any more money!" She sobbed, holding her stick thin arms out to the unflinching child. "And I need this crack!"

"You never stop whining, mom," the kid said coldly. Without hesitating, he shot her in the face.

With the grace of a natural predator, the child strolled to the next cardboard box. "Pay up or get out!" He yelled.

A family of fifteen crawled out of the cardboard box. "Please," the mother begged. "We have no place to go. Please give us more time."

"No can do, Aunt Lou. You and your breeding farm leaves right now, or dies!" The kid started to put his gun away, but then seemed to change his mind and shot her in the head.

Then finally, we saw Star's familiar face. She was standing on the curb impatiently. She wrenched the door open and plopped into the backseat.

"Him and his plot devices," Star cried with an insane gleam in her eyes. "Doesn't he know that not all black people are ignorant, and not all of them come from the ghetto?"

"Oh no!" I cried. "There's a man chasing us and he has a gun!"

Misty hurriedly pulled her head back in the window.

A man wearing baggy pants and a thousand chains was running to keep up with the car, a can of spray paint in his hands. Every once in awhile we would get hit with a stream of painful magenta. Another man was closing in on us from the other side and he had a blue can of spray paint!

"Don't worry!" Star told the limo driver, narrowing her eyes, her upper lip curling. "I got your back!" She pulled a small pistol from under her shirt. She climbed halfway out the window and began taking aim.

"We might get raped," I sobbed.

"Turn back around, Mr. Limo driver, I haven't gotten any in awhile," Misty quipped.

"He's gaining," I sniveled hysterically. "He might have gotten some pink in my hair!"

"Don't worry," Star replied. "I got this under control." A grenade materialized in her hands.

"Faster!" she screamed at the limo driver. She threw the grenade and , when the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of Graffitti Pimp number two but a magenta cloud.

"This is all his fault, he must die," Star muttered and we knew she was talking about "Ghostwriter" again. Who was that guy? What was her dark secret?

All of us breathed a sigh of relief as we cleared the last tin house.


	5. That fruity goodness of friendship!

Jade's entryway was so big that it was bigger than my living room. I hesitantly walked into a room and took my coat off. It was filled with glittering artwork.

"Get out of the closet!" Jade told me, rolling her eyes.

"That's the biggest picture I ever saw," Star said, gesturing.

Jade sighed impatiently. "That's a window, Star. You're looking at my backyard."

Star glared at her for a moment and then put away her brass knuckles.

Jade walked us out some French Doors and then onto a patio where there was what looked like a wedding buffet laid out. Minutes later, a young maid came out wearing a gigantic nametag that said "Eugenia", and she was leaning forward, tottering from the extra weight that it added to her chest.

"Eugenia," Jade ordered her. "Go get us some tea."

"My name is Dawn," the blond maid replied through clenched teeth.

Jade laughed and fluttered her fingers. "Stop that foolishness right now, Eugenia, or I won't feed you." She rolled her eyes and turned to say meaningfully to us. "Eugenia can't read."

Eugenia stomped away.

"We're like sisters now," Jade said. "So we have to do everything together. I have to take a shit right now, if anyone would like to accompany me."

"I don't know if I want to go in the bathroom with you," I said.

"I want to take a shit, so we all do," Jade said. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You're not going to start being negative are you?"

"No, I…"

"So? Oh come on, I get some of my best thinking done in there."

No one said anything so we all trooped upstairs with Jade to keep her company. Her bathroom had two stories and was the size of my house. She had five different toilets and each toilet had a plush cushion on the seat. There were mirrors everywhere.

"Take a seat," she said generously, gesturing to the remaining toilets. We all did. I was relieved when she drew a pink leopard print curtain adorned with fake fur in a deep magenta shade to give afford her some privacy.

Star kept flushing her toilet for some reason and saying "I'll be damned, running water. Granny's not gonna believe this."

"Are we really gonna be a club?" Misty asked, thumbing through a copy of MAD magazine.

"Club sounds so…" Jade paused, seeming to strain for a moment. "Juvenile."

"Let's just call ourselves the Cabbage Patch sisters of Misfortune," Misty suggested.

Behind the pink leopard print curtain, Jade's silhouette nodded thoughtfully. "I like that," she replied and flushed the toilet.

"So what should we do now?" Misty asked.

Jade's eyes lit up. "I know! Let's accuse Eugenia of stealing something and strip search her."

The other girls debated that for a moment, then shook their heads. "Nah, let's just go swimming."

"I guess," Jade said, shaking her head. I grinned as I left the room. So this was what having friends was like! And Geraldine had warned me about this for so long.


	6. A vegetable in the Attic

When I got home from, Jade's house, I was immediately greeted with a toothpick poke in my arm.

"Ow!" I cried.

"How dare you disobey me like this? How dare you!" She screamed, her eyes blazing with anger. She picked up the book she had been reading and tried to give me a paper-cut, but I managed to dodge out of the way.

She raised the toothpick again, poking me with sharp pokes all over my body. It was painful and it kind of tickled.

"Stop!"

"Get up to your room. Get up there. I saw you get out of that limousine. Don't even lie to me!"

"I want to have friends," I whined.

"Water seeks the lowest level, and that is why there is mud in the world, and little bugs to crawl through that mud. Then there are little kids who make mud pies with dirt and a garden hose," she licked her lips, seeming to be lost in thought. "Anyways, go to your room. I don't think that I'll feed you tonight until you wear that nametag, Eugenia. And I don't want any of your hillbilly relatives showing up around here, either."

"Huh?" I asked, and she shook her head as if to clear it. She raised the toothpick again. I trembled, but didn't back away. I wouldn't retreat or cower, although that toothpick looked very sharp.

"Stop it. Don't poke me again!"

I held my ground. She shook her head and wandered away, muttering about mud and flowers in the attic.

We were both shut up in our own nightmares, although mine involved sharp toothpicks and Geraldine's involved mud-pies and hillbilly relatives. But we lived in this same house filled with horrid memories. Surviving was all that mattered now. Well, and having friends, and finding out about my past, and wearing a sequined bikini. Those were important too.

I grew very bored and hungry as the night pressed on. I gazed at the clock and watched the digital numbers flash. I grew even hungrier. It had been at least an hour, maybe even two.

I decided that my room needed some work. It was scary in here because my walls were too bare. I wanted to turn my prison into a beautiful garden where I could play with my dolls and pretend that I was drowning and shipwrecked in Antarctica.

As the seconds turned to minutes, I got out my scissors and glue and I began to make paper vegetables. The zucchini and squash that I had rendered from a sheet of pine green construction paper looked very fresh and it made my mouth water. The lima beans on the far wall looked kind of flat and uninteresting and so I turned them into a cluster of eyes. These were now proud cyclopean lima beans. I decided that the hot pink squash looked very threatening. I made it look like it was chasing the lima beans and made little speech bubble signs for them both.

"No!" the squash pleaded with the cyclopean lima beans. "Please let me put that there! You'll like it, I promise." I heard that coming from Geraldine's bedroom all the time when my "father" was still living with us.

But there was still something missing and I had run out of vegetables. Finally it came to me! I filled the far wall with a gigantic depiction of a fruitcake. Even though it wasn't really a fruit, it contained the word fruit and that made me think it should count. I figured no one would notice.

Finally, I decided that my lovely garden needed a swing. I tried to make one out of legos, but it wasn't big enough. I puttered around my room and finally just pried up one of my floorboards.

Now I needed something to tie it with. But what? I was all out of dental floss.

Then inspiration hit. I began making lanyards. It took awhile, but I had all the time in the world. I hadn't felt the sun on my face in two and a half hours.

When I hooked the swing up, I did it with such pride. I began hammering hooks into the wall. Some people standing under my window in their nightclothes told me to keep the noise down.

I threw the window open and cried. "I am a vegetable in the attic! If there are any understanding publishers out there, please help me grind the knife I hope to wield!"

My neighbors ran away.

I climbed onto my swing and it promptly broke. A sharp pain traveled through my ankle. "Mother!" I cried "Mother! Come quickly."

But she didn't come. She must have put her earplugs in.

So I spent the night on my floor using my shoes as a pillow. Some ants crawled on me. I was sure that I was truly a tragic sight. I had been beaten, imprisoned and starved.


	7. Friendship is a cluster of grapes

Geraldine found me the next morning. "What are you doing?" She asked, "and what happened to this room? "

"I turned it into a beautiful garden!" I cried defiantly. "And the vegetables, they don't grow."

Geraldine shook her head with that same thin lipped expression of disapproval on her face. I was frightened that she would pull out the toothpick and begin attacking me with it when I was defenseless like this, but she shook her head and sighed. "I guess I better take you to the hospital," she said.

"You make it sound like such a chore!" I wept. "You never wanted me!"

Geraldine massaged her temples. "Get your shoes on. Let's go."

………………………………...

Even though I hadn't been in the sun in hours, Geraldine refused to buy me a gumball from the gumball machine in the doctor's office. And then she wouldn't spare a quarter to let me ride the mechanical pony. But the most crushing blow came when we came home.

"I don't want you seeing those girls anymore," Geraldine sighed. "I don't think that they're a good influence on you."

"WHY?" I sobbed hysterically. "YOU DON'T WANT ME TO HAVE ANY FRIENDS!"

"Why don't you go rest? I'll make dinner in a little while."

"I won't eat it." I insisted. "Not until you let me see my friends. And also I would like to call that one nine hundred number that they advertise late at night. And I want one of those little movies from behind that curtain at "BlockBuster"."

Geraldine must have been really tired, because she didn't even talk about how mud seeks the lowest level. She didn't even call my friends "hillbilly relatives".

"Suit yourself," she said and went into the kitchen to begin disinfecting the place on the floor that we had just walked across.

I went to my room and sulked for awhile. This not eating was hard. It was all I thought about for that entire ten minutes. I nibbled on my nails and then I began to eat the paper vegetables on my wall.

Finally I decided that I wasn't going to let her push me around anymore.

"I will call, Jade. I will," I muttered and snuck downstairs. "She can't stop me!" Hiding in the alcove, I noticed one lamp was burning and Geraldine was sitting in one of the chairs with her back to me.

"I'll call Jade in an hour," I muttered and went back upstairs.

I hobbled back downstairs. The lamp was still burning and Geraldine was still sitting there.

I cowered in the shadows until my heart stopped pounding. "I'll come back in an hour."

"I will call Jade, I will," I muttered to myself, back up in my room. "She can't stop me." The clock read that it was five thirty PM. Geraldine had to be asleep by now.

She was still sitting there. What was she doing? Maybe she was meditating.

"I'll call Jade in an hour," I muttered and went back upstairs.

"I will call Jade, I will," I muttered to myself, back up in my room. "She can't stop me."

At six o' clock, I was starting to get mad.

This was impossible. She was always in her room by six o'clock with her door bolted and chained. She was afraid of the boogeyman, even though I told her that "dad" was gone now.

I crept up behind her and then jumped up suddenly and grabbed her shoulders. "BOO!" I yelled.

She wasn't even scared. I edged around to the front of her and noticed that her face was like stone. Oh no, she had fallen into a K-hole again. It was all those horse tranquilizers that she kept in the medicine cabinet for headaches. "MOM!" I whispered. "Keep straining, there is a light at the end of that K-hole."

Slowly, I began to grow disappointed. She had fallen down the final K-hole and she would never come up again. But she was probably having fun anyways. But what about me? Now I didn't have a mother. What was I supposed to do?

"I know," I murmured thoughtfully, struck with a stellar idea. "I won't call the police! Calling the police would be stupid. I'll call Jade instead."

The phone rang a couple of times before Jade picked up. "Hello?" She sounded sort of annoyed. I could hear a whip cracking in the background.

"J-Jade."

"Hold on," Jade sighed. "Now say it."

"My entire family is gutter trash, I am the devil's spawn," I heard someone sob in the background "But you won't make me change my name! My name is Dawn! "

Jade sighed and I heard her say to someone. "I would normally peel the skin from your back for that, but I rather liked the way you worded it. It rhymed, just like the literary genius, Doctor Seuss. You may go back to the dungeon now."

"J-Jade?" I stuttered.

"What!" Jade snapped. Then she took a deep breath. "Sorry Cherry, what's wrong?"

"My mother! She's dead!" I said. "I came downstairs and found her."

"Sure you did," Jade said knowingly.

"I really did!"

"Are you sure she's not faking?"

I paused a moment to seriously consider this very plausible option. "She could be. Maybe I should light her hair on fire to make sure."

"No," Jade said decisively, and I could almost see her rolling her eyes on the other end of the line. This vision brought me comfort. "I'll be over there in a moment."

Jade arrived in record time, still dressed in a tight black leather teddy and boots that came up to her thighs. She had studded metal breasts like Madonna. A whip dangled from her belt.

"What?" she asked. "I didn't have time to change."

Jade walked slowly over to Geraldine and circled her, she didn't say anything for a moment.

Then she turned and looked at me. I breathlessly awaited her response.

"Wow!" Jade took a deep breath "Maybe she is pretending?"

I moved to light her hair on fire and Jade shook her head and pushed me away. She reached out and touched Geraldine. "She's really dead!" She looked up at me like something had just occurred to her. She was so cute, like a small child. "This is so cool. Can I keep her?"

We were interrupted as Misty and Star rushed into the room.

"What's going on?" Star demanded.

"She's dead, I think," I said, feeling a chill, like a drop of ice was sliding down my back. In fact, the back of my shirt was even wet. Misty giggled when I turned around and pocketed an ice cube tray.

"Cool! Wow-ee!" Misty exclaimed, hastening over to Geraldine's corpse. "Someone had a bad day," she joked, elbowing me and wiggling her eyebrows.

Star leaned down to examine her. "From what I can tell she died from excessive exposure to cleaning fluids. And she might have drank some accidentally."

"Oh, it wasn't an accident," I sighed. "I tried to get her to quit drinking Mr. Clean, but she wouldn't listen."

"She looks a little pale, you know, under the weather," Misty joked, elbowing me."Dead tired."

Star rolled her eyes. "You guys are so pathetic. You're acting like it's a big deal or something. I've seen five dead people!"

We all turned to look at her with awe and idolatry.

"Well!" Jade muttered, because she hated being bested by anyone. "Then I've got to see more dead people." She turned to Misty, whose face was shining with excitement. "Wanna go to the morgue?"

"Oh yeah. Let's go right now! I heard there are some burn victims there tonight." They linked arms and sashayed towards the door.

"Wait!" Star yelled. "Duh! Don't you think we should do something about her first, you morons?"

"Well, you don't have to yell at us!" Misty said indignantly.

"Let's bury her in the backyard," Star suggested and the others nodded. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

No one could argue with this logic, so we got to work. The sense of camaraderie between the four of us filled the air as we began digging a hole in my backyard. It was like an adventure, it was like camping out!

"This will make us even more like sisters," I whispered and tears of happiness came to my eyes. Even Jade looked a little teary eyed.

"OWPBBPS," Misty cracked, always ready with a brave joke to keep our spirits up. "Orphans With Parents Buried in the Backyard!"

"That's it!" Star cried, throwing her shovel down with a loud thunk. We all backed away from her and began seeking cover in case bullets started flying. She didn't seem to notice. "Group hug, you guys!"

Misty even propped up Geraldine's corpse so she could be part of this precious, hallmark moment.

"Let's take a picture!" Misty suggested. "I'll lift her hand up so it looks like she's waving."

"Cherry should stand next to her," Jade ordered, taking charge like she always did. "Star, you can stand on her right and I'll stand on her left."

We all jumped as Star picked her shovel up to throw it more dramatically halfway across the yard. She could be so moody sometimes. "What the hell is wrong with you guys? You want to take a picture?"

"Yes," Misty said.

Star shook her head in contempt, but she hadn't pulled out any weapons so we knew that she wasn't really mad. "Are you complete morons? Really?" She sighed. "I can't believe this! Jade!" She finally seemed to calm down and grinned. "Who's gonna take the picture if all of us are in it?"

"Silly," Jade said, patting her head. "My camera has a timer."

"A what?" Star asked, looking like she had been given a difficult math problem. Jade began to explain to her how it worked.

"I'll be damned," Star said again, shaking her head. She was learning so much from us. Jade handed it to her. Star squinted into the wrong end of it and took a picture of the inside of her nose before realizing that she had to turn it around.

"You may keep it," Jade told her generously.

Grinning, we all lined up for one last cameo with Geraldine before we put her in the ground.

………………………………...


	8. Felonies and Cotton Candy

-1

"Look at me! My nails! My hair! Look at us!" Jade wept as we all stood in front of the mirror. Our clothes and our hair were soaked, our shoes were muddied and our faces were covered in grime. Star had a flower growing out of some of her dirt and I think Misty stepped in dog doody.

"What color am I again?" Misty asked, scratching her head.

"You're white, stupid." Star's features slowly contorted in rage. Her nostrils flared and she began to emit a low growl. Even before she said it, from the foam coming out of her mouth, I could tell that she was thinking about Ghostwriter. "Think about it, you live in a mansion. Ghostwriter would never allow it."

"Oh," Misty said.

Beyond hearing both of them, Jade ran her hands through her hair and moaned. "I can't go home like this, I can never go home again! My parents will think I'm the gardener and they'll lock me up in our topiary and feed me crackers and birdseed!"

I thought it sounded very relaxing, but from the way Jade was trying to yank clumps of her hair out, I decided it must be a terrible experience.

"It's just a little dirt. Don't get so upset, you'll break out with a pimple." Star scoffed as a small prairie dog scurried from a big clump of mud sitting atop her head like a crown, its expression lost and panicked.

"Star's right," Misty said, finger-painting brown. muddy, stick people and little hearts and smiley faces making gang signs on the walls. Star sat down next to her and they began to play tic-tac-toe. "You can just wash and dry your clothes here, although I don't see what the big deal is. Can't she Cherry?"

"Sure," I said shrugging. "I'll put all of the clothing in the machine." I took their laundry and began my painstaking crawl up the stairs. I felt safer that way anyway, because Star was a sore loser. She was still on some kind of probation for throwing someone through a window during a heated battle of "Go Fish."

When I got downstairs, Jade was curled up in a little corner wringing her hands and Misty and Star had switched to playing Twister on the muddy footprints leading from the backyard.

Although I knew it must be very dark in that hole in the backyard, it was funny how I kept thinking Geraldine could hear every word spoken in this house and see everything that we were doing. Her orders, complaints and criticisms still lingered on the walls under the aborted games of tic-tac-toe.

"Ooooh, Ooooh, I can't get the chill out of my bones," Jade complained, rocking back and forth. "Hurry up with those towels Cherry. I must have a hot bath! Run it for me now and use bath-salts."

I ran the bath water and then retrieved the bath salts my father had given me. I made sure to grab the right bottle because the other set of "bath salts" he had given me had caused me to pass out. I came to later in his room. He had lit a bunch of candles and there was soft music playing. I accused him of drugging me and his pathetic excuse was "You aren't supposed to eat them."

It turned out I had to run Jade's bath again, because I hadn't filled the tub with Evian water. She was absolutely shocked when I told her we didn't keep any in the house and had to run down to the phone and request an emergency delivery. I guess it wasn't easy getting bottled water at twelve-thirty at night because she got in some kind of argument with whoever was on the phone. I overheard the bribes and death threats in the next room.

But finally, Jade's bath was ready. Misty, Star and I gathered in Geraldine's bathroom and sat around the tub while Jade continued to soak. She had used a lot of bathsalts and the bubbles towered towards the ceiling in a pinkish cotton-candy scented, heavenly cloud like the one that birthed the rainbow for the eternal cockeyed optimist to see after he had gotten hailed on and his car probably had a bunch of little dents in it.

"My bones, my bones are dirty," Jade lamented. "I think I swallowed some mud."

"Huh? What's wrong with that?" Misty asked and spat out a rock.

"I think a worm crawled up my-"

"Shut up," Star said shaking her head. I was starting to think that flower growing out of the dirt on her head was kind of cute. I just wanted to reach out and pluck it. "It won't kill you."

"The mud is in my hair, it's cold and full of pebbles. Oh the mud, the mud, my hair is as dirty as my bones."

Star rolled her eyes as Jade burst into tears.

"I want my rubber ducky!" Jade wailed.

"You're a spoiled brat," Star told her.

"You all have to spoil me, that's a new rule of the OWPs!"

Jade couldn't see it through the bubbles, but Misty and Star were exchanging wicked glances as they ominously dug mud out of their ears with Q-tips. I think the same thought was on all of our minds.

"We already buried one person in the backyard…" Star said slowly.

Jade innocently continued complaining about her muddy bones and her hair and that bad pedicure that she got last year and that old man that ripped her off that time she ran away and had to sell herself to make ends meet.

Star went downstairs and gave back up brandishing the vacuum. She probably wasn't able to find anything else that was electrical because Geraldine believed that all electronics were possessed by evil demons from Japanese mythology. I used to hear her through the walls at night pleading for God to forgive her for owning a vacuum.

However, Star ran into a catch. She couldn't figure out how to turn it on.

"Help," she hissed at us.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "Geraldine refused to let me touch it." I still had this terrifying memory from when I was six years old and curious. I had been reaching out to touch the vacuum bag and Geraldine had jumped from the shadows, grabbed it and hissed warningly. Then she closed the closet door and didn't come out for three days.

"I don't clean the house," Misty explained, when Star turned to her. "I sit on my ass and watch aerobics tapes and eat cheese all day."

Star's eyes grew narrow. Since none of us had the ability to turn it on, she began beating the shit out of it. She was only able to calm down after she ripped the power cord off with her teeth.

She stormed out of the room and I think she threw it out the window because I could hear a car alarm going off somewhere on our block.

She came back after a moment, looking much calmer. I looked up and smiled at her. I had never had so much as a girlfriend before. To have all of us together, helping and caring for each other made me feel like I had sisters. The fact that we had attempted to kill each other made me feel even more like I had sisters.

It was like we were in some girl's dormitory living in a cotton candy world where worries were like soap bubbles, easy to pop and parents were just as easily buried in the backyard under rain that felt like glitter. I wished it would last forever and ever.

Because if it rained forever, there would be no water shortages in the world, although it would always be full of puddles and everyone would need umbrellas.

I hoped every day of my life would be this wonderful.


End file.
